I am new here and I wasn't quite sure which forum to post this to, but here goes..

I am hoping to purchase a S35 Scarlet as soon as they become available. Due to budget limitations I will most likely get a Zeiss ZF SLR prime set only.

My post processing capabilites at the moment are rather modest, so I'll be shooting at 2K to 3K for starters. It just occurred to me that there is so much extra resolution on the sensor of the S35 that digital zooms in the post might be a viable way to simulate zoom lenses.

What do you think about the idea of adding per frame crop region metadata to a 5K raw file? That data could be used in the post to bake in the zoom as a 2K file. The whole idea would be that the camera operator could frame the zoom shot correctly during shooting using an low quality quick-and-dirty approximation of the final zoom in the viewfinder. This viewfinder proxy zoom could probably be done in-camera without too much extra processing. If that is not possible, even a continuously zoomable "safe area" indicator would help with the framing. I am assuming that some of the user assignable buttons on the REDhandle will be pressure sensitive to enable smooth zooms.

This same approach of adding per frame metadata to the raw files could be used for a whole bunch of other purposes as well. How about adding two gyro sensors in the camera and recording their data to create faster and more accurate image stabilization in the post? I realize that this data stream could be captured with an external hardware solution. However, it would be really convenient to have that data from the image plane embedded in the REDcode file. Same goes for motion tracking data of the camera itself.

I am not sure if any of this feasible, but I just wanted to throw this idea around for comments.